Abstract
Since it is difficult to diagnose hilar cholangiocarcinoma at an early stage, many patients are inoperable when they are diagnosed as having hilar cholangiocarcinoma. We studied extraluminal infiltration by superselective angiography together with cholangiography.
Ten patients were treated in the First Department of Surgery, Gunma University School of Medicine, from 1981 to 1986, and were examined with these thechniques. Six of ten cases were inoperable, and all of them showed abnormality of the right hepatic artery on angiogram. In these cases, the middle arteries around the choledochus also showed abnormality. We observed a high occurrence rate of portal vein abnormalities in the inoperable patients. The abnormalities of the epicholedochal arterries were shown more precisely in angiograms taken with the combination of superselective angiography and cholangiography. These techniques will be useful to discover early cholangiocarcinoma through visualization of the epicholedochal artery and the middle arteries.
